Page 47 of Ashes to Ashes

“It’s okay,” I murmured. “You don’t have to talk about the Army if it’s too much. I understand.”

“That’s not it,” he shook his head. “I won’t lie to you, I’ve got a lot to make right with God for what went down over there, but that was war.” He shrugged. “I don’t know anyone who came back without feeling the same. Ask any of the guys at McClintock who’ve been deployed and they’ll agree. We had our orders and we saw them through. It was ugly, and it could be hell on earth at times, but everything we did was for the greater good of the world.”

If that wasn’t it, what could it possibly be? “I’m afraid you have me at aloss.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I’ve never talked about any of this before and I’m fucking it up.” Ash rolled away from me and off the bed. Pacing a line in the rug, he confessed, “The only woman I ever loved is dead, and it’s because of me.” He stopped at stared down at me. “If I’d been a better man she’d probably still be alive.”

His fresh anguish hit me in the gut and a sick realization took hold. “You’re still in love with her,” I whispered, as the notion that Ash could never love me because he already loved someone else ran riot through my brain and straight to my heart where it fisted it in a crushing hold. “That’s why you’ve kept me at arm’s length.”

Of all the fucking men to fall in love with, I’d found the one whose heart belonged to a dead woman. There was nothing I could do to compete with that. More to the point, I didn’t want to. I’d already lived through being someone’s second choice, so as much as I cared for Ash, I wouldn’t put myself through that again.

“What? No,” he answered and my head swung back around.

“No?”

He stepped closer and placed his palms flat on the mattress. “No, I’m not still in love with Sonia.”

Was it wrong to hate her name on his lips? Did it make me a bad person that a dead woman could affect meso?

“You’renot?”

He climbed on the bed again, like a panther stalking its prey. “I promised I’d never lie to you, and I won’t start now. I loved her once, but not anymore. Hell, sometimes I wonder if maybe I only loved the idea ofher.”

“What happened?”

Straddling my legs a second time, he whispered, “October26.”

Fuck.

“October 26” was akin to saying, “September 11.” Everyone remembered where they were and what they’d been doing when the bombs went off in San Francisco, practically leveling the city’s Financial District. I’d been across the bridge in Oakland, preparing to run through my sound check for a show later that evening. Almost immediately, the entire Bay Area went into lock down and when the dust had finally settled—quite literally—over one thousand people had been murdered, most of them in a two-block radius of back-to-back skyscrapers.

“What happened to Sonia?”

I could understand being broken hearted the woman he’d loved died in the attack, but what I couldn’t wrap my head around was why he held himself responsible. Why he took the blame for her murder when it’d been just another terrorist attack on Americansoil.

Leaning forward, he laid of soft kiss on my forehead. “Every damn day I watch you give me a small piece of yourself, and then your big brown eyes beg for a piece of me in return. But you have to understand something about me: I don’t talk about my past. Ever. It’s not personal. It’s just who I am. Who I’ve become.” He rubbed his thumb over my trembling bottom lip as his eyes bored into my soul. “Please don’t make me say it, Rae. Just …” he sighed. “Can’t you just accept me for who I am today? I’ll gladly give you all ofhim.”

Maybe if I were a different sort of woman I could have said yes. I could have nodded and told him he was all I needed, but I wasn’t that type of woman. I was who I was, and I couldn’t be with a man who knew everything about me, but wouldn’t share his whole self in return. Given what I’d been through, I would never use Ash’s history against him, but a part of me had to know what his scars were and how he’d gotten them, just like he knew how I’d come to havemine.

And so, with tears in my eyes, I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Ash, but if you want me, you have to share it all. I can’t accept anythingless.”

He dropped his head forward and his chin rested against his chest as he pushed a deep sigh from his lungs. The room went silent, the only sound our breathing. His choked, and mine erratic. There were certain moments in life when your future literally rested on the next words someone said, where life could go one of two ways. And as I waited to hear what he’d say next, I knew this was one such moment. If Ash told me he couldn’t give me what I needed from him, that would be the end ofus.

Maybe it was selfish demand something he’d never given anyone else and hadn’t ever planned to, but with my heart on the line, if I didn’t look out for it, who would?

Mentally, I prepared myself to walk out of this room, pick up my phone, and tell Rocky he needed to fire McClintock and put a new security team in place. Because if Ash told me he couldn’t be the man I needed him to be, our situation here would be untenable. I couldn’t go on living like strangers, as if he didn’t mean the world to me. I couldn’t force myself to pretend this conversation had never taken place.

When Ash raised his face to mine, his eyes were determined and his cheeks were flushed. I held my breath, waiting to learn which way the pendulum would swing.

“Okay then,” he said on a gust of anguished breath and my heart skipped a beat. “I want like hell for you to accept me as I am, but more than that, I want you. God help me, Rae, but I can’t stop wanting you.” He surged forward, slid his big hands into my hair, and captured my lips in a frenzied, hungry kiss. Pulling back, his eyes flicked between mine, searching. “Tell me it’s the same foryou.”

I licked my lips, tasting him on them. “It’s the same Ash. You’re all Iwant.”

This time when our lips met, our kiss wasn’t hurried or frenetic. Licking his way inside my mouth, our tongues danced and moved in perfect harmony, our sighs and moans and breathing synced to create a perfect beat. The music ofus.

“I promise to tell you everything,” he said against my lips, “but first I need to be inside of you.” He kissed his way down my jaw, along the slope of my neck, and across my chest. “I need to bury my cock so far inside of you there’s nowhere else for me togo.”

“Yes,” I said, running my hands through his hair and holding him against my beating chest.

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